My List of Tools I Cannot Live Without

February 2, 2010 13:47 | Programming

This one goes out to…me. I’ve recently spent a lot of time setting up new workstations and am soon going to be spending a lot more. This post is a rundown of all the tools and litter helper apps that I absolutely positively cannot live without. Are there some gems in here that you would like? Probably. But mostly this one is for my own sake.

  • Launchy - Simple, fast, open source application launcher
    • Launchy Plugin – Ty to post to twitter from Krzysztof Ko?mic
    • Launchy Plugin – GCaly to post to your Google Calendar
  • ClipX - Tiny little clipboard history manager.  I use this one about 70 times each day
  • WinSplit Revolution – Awesome utility to throw applications between dual monitors and tile them easily
  • Deskpins - A simple utility to force windows to stay on top. Not the love of my life, but the best that I’ve found since xNeat went for-pay
  • Firefox - With the firebug and Web Developer plugins. I really only use it for debugging pages and playing with javascript. This is mostly because I use
  • Chrome - Web browser. It just feels faster, ok? Oh and the too many tabs extension.
  • EditPad Pro – Great notepad utility. Has an unlimited trial version, and I’ve had a license for it for years. I might give Notepad2 a try, but I doubt I’ll make the jump.
  • jZip - Open source zip utility. Handles all the stuff that Winzip and WinRar do with less whining.
  • TortoiseSVN - Windows Explorer – Integrated SVN source control. As I use git more and more for personal projects I’m starting to regret how heavyweight the integration is though, might try something new next time.
  • MSysGit - While we’re on the subject.
  • Fiddler2 - Http viewer, debugger. Don’t use it too much but its handy to have around.
  • IE 8 Developer Toolbar – Its actually quite good
  • GIMP - I ain’t a fancy-nancy designer and I’m not paying for Photoshop.
  • Paint.NET – When I want to draw stuff but don’t want something as heavyweight as GIMP
  • Inkscape - For working with svg images. I use it surprisingly often
  • WinMerge - Great little application for comparing two files/directories/whatever
  • Console2 - Could never really get it to work better than the powershell default but it deserves another shot
  • Powershell – Are you a developer on windows and don’t use this? You need to be punched in the face (or at least have you mouse stole).
  • AutoHotKey – For scripting windows
    • AutoHotKey Script – BDD names from JP Boodoohoo. I had made some customizations to it but they were lost with the lastdisk crash. Oh well
  • Gallio Icarus – Sometimes you just want a stand-alone test runner GUI and this is the best
  • Putty - For SSHing
  • TweakUI – For Windows XP. Hopefully that’s a game I won’t have to play for much longer
  • Reflector - Must have for .NET development
  • Jing - Oh I love this. The best for quick screen captures (though it would be nice if it had a lighter memoery footprint).
  • FileZilla Client – Ftp I usually do with windows explorer (you knew it could do that, right?) but SFTP we need to bring in the pros
  • Ruby – I’m going to try just running IronRuby next time, I swear.
  • SQLite.NET – Tends to come up sooner or later, good for quick free file-based database
  • KeePass – I keep all my passwords in here – shh don’t tell anybody
  • Growl for Windows – I wrote a friggin’ log4net Growl Appender, obviously I want something to read it.
  • Synergy – To share mouse and keyboard with multiple computers
  • Visual Studio – duh, but also the following plugins/extensions
    • TestDriven.NET – can’t live without youuuuu
    • T4 Toolbox – gotta have it since I like Sharp Architecture so much
    • ASP MVC – nuff said
    • ZenCoding – I haven’t had a chance to use it yet but I really can’t wait till I do
    • Refactor Pro and CodeRush – It’s a love affair, though I just picked up a ReSharper license at the last VAN so I guess I should compare and contrast or something
      • CR_ClassCleaner Plugin for DxCore
  • Microsoft Live Meeting – For the virtual alt net sessions
  • Skype
  • Dropbox
  • SharpDevelop - I got to get into using this interesting IDE more
  • RubyMine – Great for ruby, and I have a license!
  • VLC Media Player – Way more lightweight feeling than the others and plays anything

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Comments

Nice picks. I prefer 7zip for a zip utility and Notepad++ for text editing on Windows. Command line SVN also seems to give me less trouble then Tortoise. I’ll have to give jZip a try.

/ Vic
February 3, 2010, 23:00

Yeah, given that I’m using git and TFS more than SVN nowadays I probably won’t install Tortoise. I actually need to publish a new article about my powershell profile script located here: http://github.com/togakangaroo/ps-profile

Basically I create an svn function that redirects all commands to Tortoise so I can type svn update, svn commit, etc. from the command-line. This just invokes the Tortoise commands but I find it to be the best of both worlds.

/ togakangaroo
February 3, 2010, 23:06

Glad to see you’re sharing the CodeRush love. Have you tried out the new TestRunner yet? (http://community.devexpress.com/blogs/markmiller/archive/2009/11/16/the-test-runner-you-ve-been-waiting-for.aspx).

We’d love to hear what you think.

Best wishes,
Rachel.

/ Rachel
February 5, 2010, 12:30

Unbelievable, since when do I get traffic?

@Rachel,
I have tried it in the beta and found it to still be rather buggy. I write many of my tests with several layers of inheritance and abstract classes to share scenarios between fixtures. I found the runner having problems picking some of my tests up as well as giving some false positives.

I do like the devexpress stuff and obviously love CodeRush and I will certainly give it another shot in the future, but for the time being TD.Net is my runner of choice. This is doubly so since going forward my work is likely to be mostly in VS 2010 – get cracking on that new version guys!

/ togakangaroo
February 5, 2010, 12:52

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